The present invention relates generally to a vehicle seat such as a car seat, and particularly to a vehicle seat having a seating surface configured to be moved in response to a frontal crash.
A car seat (vehicle seat) having a seat bottom with a seating surface configured to be moved rearward in response to a frontal crash such that a car collides head-on against another car or other object is known in the art. For example, the inventor of this application previously proposed in his prior patent application published under JP 2008-213546 A (corresponding European patent application was published under EP 2154019 A1) a vehicle seat having a pretensioner (gas cylinder) disposed with its axial direction oriented in a right-left direction of a vehicle to thereby move the seating surface rearward. The vehicle seat disclosed in this publication has another pretensioner (gas cylinder) provided for the purpose of promptly pulling a seat belt in upon detection of a frontal crash of the vehicle.
Providing two dedicated gas cylinders in a vehicle seat as above would have several disadvantages which may include complicated wire arrangement, upsizing of the mechanism and associated increase in the weight of the vehicle seat.
With this in view, there is a need to provide an improved vehicle seat with a simple and compact mechanism by which a seating surface is moved and a seat belt is pulled in upon detection of a frontal crash of a vehicle.